Indian-Jewish Food: Recipes and Stories from the Backstreets of Bondi

Part personal archive, part culinary time capsule, Indian-Jewish Food offers a heartfelt glimpse into a little-known food tradition shaped by migration, memory, and home cooking.

Centered on the Baghdadi Jewish community of India—many of whom settled in the Sydney suburb of Bondi in the 1950s and '60s—this collection preserves dishes that reflect both heritage and adaptation.

The book brings together recipes from across generations, often told through the author’s own family stories and vivid headnotes. The dishes reflect a blending of Indian flavors with Jewish dietary laws and Iraqi culinary roots, resulting in a cuisine that is recognizably Indian, but distinct in its rhythms and intentions.

Alongside recipes for cheese samoosas, tomato-based chittarnee, and spiced chickpea chatpatay, the book also captures community lore—most notably the story of Eze Moses, whose spice shop in Bondi became a local landmark and a link to a cultural past. This is not a comprehensive study—it’s a personal attempt to keep a nearly forgotten food tradition alive, one dish and one story at a time.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout. Measurements in metric.